Goodbye to Dreams (4 page)

Phil Spencer, who ran a small printing business, began to take money on the outcome and, seeing the fight going in favour of Jack Simmons for a while, began to get anxious and looked around wondering whether to make a run for it. But then Willie revived and the fight was his again. Jack was the favourite and to make a profit Phil Spencer needed soft Willie to surprise them.

When a policeman rode up on his bicycle to see the cause of the uproar, he had to push his way through almost fifty people to reach the now weakly flaying arms of Willie and Jack. He pulled them apart but neither could stand; the battering had made jelly of their muscles.

The crowd quickly moved away and gathered around the weasel-faced Phil Spencer. He insisted that the result was a draw and there was no payout. It was only the presence of the constable that prevented another, more vicious fight taking place. Both boys were helped back to their
respective
carts and the horses led the bruised and bloody participants away.

As Willie, lolling back in his seat, moved past Jack Simmons, he leaned up a little, pretending not to be in pain, and whispered in a voice distorted by a blocked nose, ‘Say another word about my mam and I’ll hammer you proper. Right?’

‘Don’t go home early, not on Wednesdays. That’s all I’m sayin’. Hate for you to find them all tucked up in bed. It’s her who needs a hammerin’, not me! Gettin’ talked about like that ACH Y FIE!’ he shouted as his horse moved on.

Willie moved as though to pull him out of the cart again and Jack clicked to move his horse faster and hurried away, laughing.

That had been the first time. Since then, several others had hinted at what went on at home on Wednesdays. Today was the first time he had been able to face going home early to see for himself. There had been several times when he had been close enough to call, delivering groceries not far from home, but he hadn’t been ready to face the confrontation and its aftermath.

He had been trying – not very hard – to ask the sisters for an early finish for quite a while. He wanted to know but hadn’t the nerve to find out. Today, after bringing the sisters home so late, he had no excuse for not leaving early.

He walked home, forcing each foot forward, his heavy boots like lead weights. To stop at the park on the way home was a strong temptation. From what he’d heard, the man left at six o’clock, long before he, Willie, was due home. It was rarely earlier than eight before work at the shop and seeing to the horses was done. He dragged himself on. He was sixteen, a man: he had to face the situation and deal with it.

W
ILLIE WAS JUST
sixteen and a tall, rather handsome young man, sure of himself and confident in a way that was unusual in the area and conditions in which he had been brought up. Since his father had died of consumption two years before, he had been the man of the house, caring for his mother and his three younger sisters. Now, things were happening that needed his urgent attention.

His long legs took him home through the streets and across the fields to the older part of the town where he and his family lived. His face showed a tenseness unusual for him and his hands, swinging to match his strides, were tightly clenched.

He normally walked down Green Hill, with the house in view for the last few minutes but now, although the darkness of the winter evening prevented anyone from seeing his approach, he turned past the bridge and along Nightingale Lane and reached the house by passing behind the row of willow trees along the meandering brook.

The door was closed and the curtains drawn. He crept to the window and heard soft voices, one his mother’s, the other that of a man. So Jack Simmons had been right, damn him! He wondered where his sisters were. The door didn’t lock and the bolt across the bottom had long since fallen away from the rotting wood. He pushed against it and the voices stopped. Holding back his temper, but tense with the prospect of a fight, he walked past the peeling walls of the passage and into the small living room.

The visitor stood up to greet him, and Willie stared. He didn’t know what he’d expected but it wasn’t this. He saw a portly and rather elegantly dressed middle-aged man with his hair combed forward with rather
old-fashioned
neatness onto his forehead, almost touching his thick dark eyebrows. His clothes were well fitting and he looked successful and assured.

Willie was conscious of his own shabby hand-me-down trousers and the jacket with torn pockets and buttons missing. He was aware of the shirt, patched and thin, and the white scarf that was an attempt to hide it. They
stared at each other for a moment then the man smiled and offered his hand – which Willie ignored.

‘Who are you and what do you want?’ Willie demanded.

‘I’m a friend of your mother. My name is Derek Camborne. You must be Willie,’ he added as a frightened-looking Mrs Morgan failed to introduce them.

Belatedly, Mrs Morgan smiled at her son and explained, agitation showing in her blue eyes as she watched Willie’s fists tighten and his stance begin to stiffen.

‘Mr Camborne is a dear friend, Willie, and I want him to be your friend too. Sit and talk to him while I get you something to eat, is it? I know you and he will get on, once the ice is broken.’ She edged out of the room and into the smaller room at the back where she hastily prepared a piece of fish ready for the pan waiting near the fire. The anxiety didn’t leave her face as she cooked the food and listened for the dreaded sound of fighting to reach her from the other room.

When she returned to the living room, both men were seated on the edge of chairs, studying each other, and the air between them prickled.

‘Tell him, Derek, dear,’ she urged. ‘There’s no sense in delaying any longer.’

‘Your dear mother has consented to marry me,’ Derek said baldly, and he at once moved back as Willie stood and glowered at him.

‘Now, Willie,’ his mother said nervously. ‘It’s all decided and there’s nothing you can say that will alter things.’ Her voice was still nervous as she watched her son’s face. ‘It’s happy you should be. Derek will give me and your sisters a good comfortable home in Cardiff and we’ll see you often. Now, what’s there to be upset about that, eh?’

‘What about me?’ he asked. ‘You needn’t think I’m moving to Cardiff! I have the Misses Owen to look after. Need me they do.’

‘That’s what we thought, Willie.’ Derek smiled, unable to hide his relief. ‘Best you stay here. There’s this house with the rent paid up for a month after we leave. We thought that’s what you’d prefer.’

‘Gladys Davies will help if you need her,’ Mrs Morgan added. She sat beside Derek Camborne, calmer now Willie had relaxed from the
threatening
posture he had shown from the moment he had walked in.

‘What sort of house will it be?’ Willie demanded. He tried to think of all the questions he should ask, feeling the need to remind this interloper that he was the head of the family and its guardian. ‘Can you look after them proper? I want to see for myself before they go, mind!’

‘Quite right too. I’m impressed with the way you look after your family, Willie. Your father would have been proud of you. Yes, of course come and
see where we’ll live. I have a small but well-furnished house and a job in the railway offices so there’s no fear that I won’t take proper care of them. Come often and if there’s anything you can suggest I can do to make things better for them, well, you won’t find me a sluggard in doing it.’

When the man had gone and the girls were back from their weekly music lesson, paid for by Derek, the family sat and discussed the future. It was clear to Willie that his sisters welcomed the change. His mother’s eyes showed excitement and joy and he knew that however lonely the prospects were for himself, he couldn’t spoil things for them.

‘All right, then, I’ll stay in this house, for a while at least, to see how I get on. If it’s too much of an effort to shift for myself I’ll find a room where the landlady will cook for me and do my washing.’ Willie was cheerful as they discussed plans, forcing himself to put aside fear of the empty life ahead of him. ‘But,’ he added, waving a warning finger, ‘I’m going to Cardiff to have a look-see at this man’s house and to ask a lot more
questions
before you say for definite that you’ll marry him. Right?’

‘Of course, Willie, but you’ll find nothing bad about him.’ She patted his arm and added wistfully, ‘Lonely I’ve been since your dad died. I couldn’t miss this chance, now could I? Not with him being such a kind man an’ all.’

‘No, Mam. I don’t begrudge you a chance of happiness.’

‘Be getting married yourself before long. Everyone remarks on how handsome and clever you are.’ She patted his arm again, then went to rescue the dried-up fish from the oven, chatting as she went. Willie felt a lump fill his throat, aware of how much he would miss her fussing and her chatter. And losing his sisters too. How would he bear not seeing them growing up and becoming prettier and prettier? Proud of his family he was and now he’d have to find something to fill the empty hours in his days and the hollowness in his heart.

It was nearly ten o’clock and the three girls and his mother settled to sleep on the mattress on the floor of the one bedroom. Willie pulled the couch on which he slept closer to the fire. He longed to rest but he couldn’t. He was painfully tired, every bone a dull ache, but his brain needed
stimulation
and refused to allow him to sleep.

He pulled on his shabby jacket, wrapped the long white scarf around his neck and went out, boots ringing on the cold roads in the old, almost silent, part of the town. He ran until he reached the house where Jack Simmons lived, the boy who worked for Waldo Watkins in the town’s largest grocery store. He called him out and fought him again for being the first to tell him about his mother. This time Jack won but both boys went home satisfied.

A few weeks into 1930, Willie arrived home to see a horse and cart outside
his house. In the light of a lantern held by one of his sisters and another on the cart, people were in and out of the doorway, loading up the few
valuables
his mother possessed. He turned away and, instead of going home, went to the pictures, walking to each picture house and studying the
advertisements
outside, marked T for talking, S for silent and T S for part talking. He decided on Sophie Tucker in
Honky Tonk
, but spent the time thinking not of the story unfolding before him but of the empty house awaiting him. He was hungry and wished he’d spent the money on fish and chips.

It was strange stepping into the dark house. The smell of dampness seemed intensified by the absence of his family. Moving out their
possessions
had disturbed its dankness. The fire was almost out and he knew that was going to be a problem. He came home so late and to light a fire before he could even boil a kettle – he’d ask a neighbour to feed it for him during the day. Beside the practicalities, the house would seem more welcoming if there was warmth. The silence was absolute. He wished his mam hadn’t taken the cat’s whisker wireless he’d made.

He lay on the horsehair mattress on the floor of the bedroom and stared up at the calico-rag ceiling. He would make himself a bed. That was what he needed most: a proper bed to put the mattress on and, after that, he’d make a table and a chair. Short-term plans established, he slept.

He hadn’t told Cecily and Ada about his family leaving. Ashamed somehow, even though Derek Camborne had married his mother and was taking good care of his sisters. He thought about telling them but somehow the words wouldn’t come. Then a week passed, and several more, and he became accustomed to his solitary existence and let the situation slip away into acceptance without a word to anyone.

He had an occasional letter from his mother and he visited the
grey-stone
terraced house in Cardiff a few times, so, when Cecily or Ada asked, he could truthfully say, ‘Fine, thank you, Miss, they’re all fine.’

Accustomed to their own mother’s absence, Cecily and Ada continued with the routine of the shop. Owen Owen worked at the docks when there was work. Sometimes the place was busy with ships alongside each other almost filling the docks but it was more and more the norm for there to be no work and he would spend days just hanging around, between going down to the docks office twice a day to ‘blob’ the local name for adding their name to the list of men available for work. Men were grateful for even a few hours’ work. Women begged to have food ‘on the book’, promising to pay when their men earned a few shillings.

It seemed to Ada, during those weeks when winter exacerbated the
scarcity of jobs, that Cecily was constantly watching the door for Danny Preston to appear. Her sister’s eyes looked up every time someone walked in and even when the shop was closed for the night she was still reluctant to move away from the sound of the shop’s doorbell.

In the evening, after preparing and eating a meal, and spending time getting ready for the following day, they usually went out. To the pictures or a dance, where again Cecily’s attention was on the door, or searching the crowd for a sight of Danny’s dark head. Gareth Price-Jones they did see, and each girl thought he had called to see her.

It was Cecily Gareth wanted to invite out but, because he was
embarrassed
by her forthrightness and confident manner, it was Ada he looked at when he was talking. He closed his barber’s shop earlier than Owen’s and he developed the habit of calling once or twice each week to buy some fruit to take home to his mam. He didn’t tell Mam he bought it from the Owen girls, she did go on so about the unsuitability of a match with Cecily or Ada – more so since their mother had gone off with another man. So, she presumed he had bought it at Waldo Watkins’ on the main road.

Clutching the bag of fruit, he would hang around trying to think of interesting stories to make the girls laugh, while they, anxious to close the shop, laughed at his jokes and made him feel a great wit. He was always reluctant to leave but never managed to invite either of them out. He intended to. Every evening he planned what he would say but when the moment came and he had to speak or leave, he always left.

Each morning the girls were up early to attend to their chores while their father set about the tasks he habitually performed. Fitting the work around his hours on the docks it was he who went to the wholesaler to fetch the sacks of potatoes and the greens and carrots and whatever else the girls needed. He brought boxes of fresh fish from the market and prepared it for sale, and efficiently boned the sides of bacon and the occasional ham. The bones were put in a bowl and offered for sale to make soup and were quickly sold. The work was done efficiently and he helped to clear the mess of the day’s preparations but he showed no joy in anything he did. He dealt with the work like an automaton, without satisfaction or pleasure.

He’d had two sons, both of whom had died at sea during the 1914-18 war. Their widows were constant visitors to the shop and they worried about the man’s health and state of mind as did his daughters. Victor’s wife, Dorothy, was the most dominant of his daughters-in-law and she frequently bustled in criticizing Cecily and Ada, and presuming that, as the widow of the oldest son and having a son, Owen Owen, named for his grandfather, that she should have priority when there was ever a slight hint
of the other daughter-in-law being favoured. Rhonwen, the widow of the younger son, John, was gentle and inclined to praise the sisters and assure them they were doing everything they could to help their father back to happiness. Rhonwen was Owen’s favourite, as his son John had been.

Ada and Cecily discussed their father’s health several times with the doctor but they had been told there was no cure for a broken heart. Their mother, leaving as she had, had ruined the man’s life completely.

‘Coming to the dance tomorrow night?’ Gareth asked one Friday evening when he called for his usual bag of fruit. ‘I – I was wondering, like, if you’d fancy a trip to Cardiff instead and see what’s on at the Variety? Good shows they have there.’ He had chosen a moment when Ada was out, collecting Myfanwy from family friends, Beryl and Bertie Richards, where she was having tea with their son Edwin.

Cecily was so surprised that she stared at him for a long moment and Gareth blushed and stammered out an excuse for her.

‘No, no, of course not. I expect you’re too tired to travel all that way and on a Friday too. I’ll ask again sometime.’ He began to back out of the shop, clutching his bag of fruit like a shield.